Sony exits rear-projection TV market

Despite being the world’s largest manufacturer of rear-projection TVs, Sony this morning confirmed that it will quit the rear-projection TV field to instead focus on flat screens built using liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology.

The move was spurred by the ever-decreasing demand for rear-projection sets. Sony only expects to sell 400,000 of such units this fiscal year compared to 1.1 million in the period before. This was at least partly responsible for a roughly $526.3 million loss in Sony’s TV business. By contrast, Sony said it will sell 10 million LCD TVs compared to 6.3 million in 2006. Sony is just responding to the realities of the marketplace, much like Hitachi and Seiko Epson who also pulled out of the rear-projection TV market earlier this year.